Nearly everything we do leaves behind some kind of waste. During the 1980's, waste management issues became a matter of heightened public concern because of increasing waste production, shrinking landfill capacity, rising disposal costs, public opposition to new landfills and public concern for the health of the planet. All of these factors have increased the importance of thoughtfully managing waste.
An article of waste can be considered to be unwanted matter, that which is left after useful substances or parts have been used, or alternatively, an article of waste can be considered to be a post-consumption item or material, a resource to be recycled or handled in a particular way to maximize usefulness or to minimize harmfulness. Almost all post-consumption items, (which include both the post-consumption items themselves and/or the containers that house the items) are either recyclable or should be managed in some particular way, (e.g., hazardous materials should be isolated from non-hazardous materials to avoid contaminating the non-hazardous materials; hazardous materials should be properly disposed of).
Households, for example, typically generate recyclable post-consumption items and materials such as cereal boxes and other paper products, steel and aluminum cans, plastic milk and juice cartons, glass jars and so on. Industries, manufacturers, commercial establishments, agricultural concerns and so on also typically generate recyclables.
Recycling is one method that maximizes the usefulness of post-consumption items. Recycling includes a series of activities associated with collecting and re-using materials that would otherwise fill landfills. Recycling includes sorting and processing recyclables into component materials and using these component materials to manufacture new products. Household and business-generated recyclables typically are collected at the curb, are taken to drop-off centers or buy-back centers, or are collected through deposit/refund programs. After collection, recyclables are typically sent to a materials recovery facility to be sorted and prepared into marketable commodities for input to further manufacturing processes. Recyclables generated by industries, manufacturers, agricultural concerns and the like are frequently sold to materials recovery facilities, brokers or manufacturers under private treaty.
Recycling typically depends largely on manual labor-intensive tracking and sorting operations. For example, consumers and businesses typically separate their post-consumption items into recyclables and non-recyclables, and separate recyclables into different categories (paper, plastic, aluminum and so on). As with all manual labor-intensive activities, these processes are error prone. For example, a consumer may not have time or the inclination to separate recyclables from non-recyclables, resulting in recyclables that needlessly end up in an incinerator or landfill. There are other problems with manual sorting as well. A consumer may not place a recyclable in the proper recycling container (i.e., may place a glass jar in the “plastic” recycling bin). Hence, even after recyclables are sorted into categories, typically recyclables are inspected and resorted before further processing, adding to the costs involved with recycling. Once separated and cleaned, these post-consumption items and materials may be ready to be recycled into new products.
More and more of today's products are being manufactured completely or partially from recycled materials. Consumers increasingly demand more environmentally-friendly products, thereby encouraging manufacturers to produce recycled products and to recycle items and materials used in the manufacturing process. It can only be expected that recycling will increase rather than decrease as the earth's resources are depleted and as people become increasingly concerned about the planet's health.
In addition to generating general recyclables, households may also produce post-consumption products containing hazardous materials that should receive special handling. For example, a diabetic in the household may generate, for instance, syringes, lancets and blood-contaminated alcohol pads. Empty (and not-so-empty) cans of paint and bug spray also constitute hazardous materials typically generated by households. This type of post-consumption product ideally should be separated from other products containing non-hazardous materials to prevent contamination of the non-hazardous materials, and typically should receive special treatment to reduce the volume or harmfulness of the hazardous material. Many household hazardous materials can also be recycled but may need special handling in the process.
Industries, manufacturers, commercial establishments and agricultural concerns also typically create hazardous byproducts that may or may not be recyclable but should be tracked and handled in a particular way. In industry, a manifest is typically used to track and manage hazardous materials. The United State Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates some types of hazardous waste by requiring that it be tracked with a manifest and by requiring those who generate, recycle, treat, store and/or dispose of hazardous wastes to have permits for their operations. Treatment of hazardous waste, like manual sorting of recyclables, is also subject to human error. For example, workers may incorrectly identify or classify hazardous wastes, leading to inefficiencies in processing, or worse. Many hazardous post-consumption products generated by industry can also be recycled to save resources and frequently, reduce production costs.
Hence, a need exists for an automated, less labor-intensive, less error-prone way to identify, track, sort, distribute and broker post-consumption items and materials.
In the eighties, a new technology called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) was developed for identification, tracking and data capture. In an RFID system, data is carried in a tag or smart label and is retrieved by machine-readable means. RFID systems offer an advantage over bar-coding because line-of-sight access to the tagged item is not necessary. RFID tags can be read through container walls, paint, dirt and in cluttered areas. In addition, RFID tags can be read and written to at a range of up to hundreds of meters. More than 500 tags per second can be read.
A basic RFID system consists of a reader and a tag that is electronically programmed with fixed (read only) or variable (read/write) data. Data stored in the tag is decoded by the reader and transmitted to a host computer to be processed. Communication between the tag and the reader typically is wireless.
An RF tag can be active, passive or semi-passive. An active tag is powered by a battery and can initiate communication with the reader. An active RF tag can be read and updated from distances of up to hundreds of kilometers. Passive and semi-passive tags are activated only when they are read or interrogated by another device first and typically have shorter read ranges. The information on an RF tag, whether active, passive or semi-passive can be changed or added to. RF tags come in a variety of shapes and sizes and can be housed in a protective covering, converted into paper labels, injected into plastic molds, inked onto surfaces and so on. The RF tag may emit a series of waveforms that can be interpreted by the reader as a binary number.
A reader is typically composed of an antenna and a coupler. An antenna emits radio signals to activate the tag and to read data from and write data to the tag. An antenna can produce an electromagnetic field ranging from one inch to 100 feet or more. The antenna transfers data from the tag to a coupler. The coupler controls data acquisition and communication.
RF tags can be inexpensive to produce and can be read through a variety of substances such as water, paint, and dirt. It would be helpful it there were a way to use RF tags to identify, manage, and manipulate post-consumption items and materials. It would also be helpful if information concerning post-consumption items were available. For example, entities such as manufacturers and retailers need information concerning consumer buying and consuming to determine re-stock patterns, time to use and product disposal in order to maximize efficiency and profitability. Information concerning buying may be available through automated inventory systems, for example, but capturing information at disposal time is frequently not possible or, alternatively, the information available may be very incomplete. Capturing information at disposal time would provide manufacturers and retailers with a complete life-cycle pattern. Hence a need exists to capture and provide post-consumption item information.